RESURGENT CHINA

Hokitika Guardian, 13 September 1940, Page 6

RESURGENT CHINA

NEW ERA IN WEST.

MISSIONARY’S DESCRIPTION.

AUCKLAND, Sep, 11

With so much happening in other parts of the world, little notice is being taken of the extraordinary economic industrial and social development that is in progress in Western China, as » direct outcome of Japanese aggression. What is taking place there under Marshal Cliiang Kai-shek is probably more remarkable in its way than the transformation of Turkey under the regime of Mustapha.Kenial and his successors. A brief description of recent events in this region of 250,000,000 inhabitants was given yesterday in an interview' by Mr T. W. Martin Taylor, an Auckland member of the China Inland Mission, who ha.s been for eight years in the field, and is now' in New Zealand on furlough.

Migration of 50,000,000 •'Mr Taylor, who is a graduate of Auckland University College, lias been stationed at Lanchow, a large city in tlie province of Kansu, on the border of Inner Mongolia, and about 550 miles north-north-west of Chungking, Chiang Kai-shek's capital. To reach Hongr kong lie and his family made a flight of 1500 miles in an aeroplane owned by a German-Chinese company and piloted by Chinese. After the Japanese, invasion, said Mr Taylor, fully 50,000,000 Chinese migrated to toe west as refugees. These people included a very large proportion of technicians and skilled artisans employed in factories which the Japanese bad destroyed or seized. Among them also were the staffs and students of nearly all the leading universities and superior schools. The western region already supported a population of about 200,000,000, and was more than self-sufficient in loodstuffs, wool and cotton. It was also rich in minerals, but had not been developed industrially to any extent, and was hampered in its export trade by great distances ai)d poor communications.

Wide Range of Goods The new arrivals were unaffie to bring heavy plant with them, but promptly set to work by forming iur dustries along the old Chinese lines, but witk modern improvements, using manpower instead of power-driven machinery. . For example, .hand looms, were re-designed to make all kinds of textiles as efficiently as possible. J» this way the co-operatives last winter turned out 50,003 army blankets. The number of these organisations now ran into thousands. They were financed largely with loans from America, and the chief adviser to the movement was a Christchurch man, Mr Rewi Alley, who had been engineer to the Shanghai Municipal Council. The co-operatives were, supplying a wide range of goods. A great deal was being done to open up., waste lands, very largely [for rotten- growing. Foreign loans were being used for reconstruction and economic organisation. The Burma Road The closing of the Burma Road, Mr Taylor said, had affected the ciyil economy mainly by stopping the importation of railway, material. However. the guerilla troops . were making up for this to some extent bv removing the rails of lines controlled by tlib Japanese whenever opportunity offered and transporting them to the w r est. The co-operatives wore also salvaging light metals from crashed ■ Japanese aeroplanes and using them to make all kinds of laboratory apparatus for schools.

“Military resistance,” said Mr Taylor, “is only half the answer to the question; Will the Chinese submit to Japanese agricultural feudalism,' or w r ill they remain a free people and work out their own destiny?”